


Child of Snow and Darkness

by catastropheCatatonic



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Original Character(s), The Long Night, The Night's Watch (ASoIaF), The Others (ASoIaF) - Freeform, White Walkers, i wrote this like a year ago i'm sorry, long fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-02-27 13:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18740251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catastropheCatatonic/pseuds/catastropheCatatonic
Summary: For the Watch.That was the last thing Jon Snow heard before being stabbed by his Brothers of the Night's Watch. Confused and inexplicably alive, Jon is taken on horseback by a familiar face into the endless tundras of the land Beyond the Wall. When he is brought to a nomadic horde of strange, mystical warriors and their undead creations and introduced to a clever, otherworldly king who seems to know more about Jon than he knows about himself, he comes to realize that his family and his life before near-death may have not been what it seemed.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The night is dark and full of whatever the fuck this is. 
> 
> I wrote this fic maybe a year ago (?) and it's quite long. I'll post a chapter or two every Sunday probably around 9:00 or 10:00 EST just because I want to stretch it out and have a chance to edit out anything that I feel like doesn't work. Look, I know the pairing is absolutely cursed, but I did what had to be done. 
> 
> This fic also combines the canon of A Song of Ice and Fire (the books by GRRM) and Game of Thrones (the HBO television series) so I didn't have to pick and choose what I wanted to add. The Night King isn't in the books and so far we don't know very much about the Others (White Walkers), so I just kind of wrote a terrible fic to fill in the blanks. 
> 
> The Others in the books are described as 'beautiful' or 'mystical' and GRRM explained that they are similar to the Sidhe, which are fae-like beings from Irish mythology, so if I'm describing the White Walkers as such then that's why. This whole fic doesn't make a ton of sense, so don't take it too seriously. It started out as a crack fic I wrote when I lost a bet, and I guess I just felt like finishing what I started and it ended up being 400-ish pages. Whoops!
> 
> I'm so sorry this has to exist on this website, I really am. 
> 
> ALSO!!
> 
> The first chapter is a prologue. If you haven't read the books, then you may be a little confused. The prologue tells what occurred after the legend of the Night's King (not the Night King), who was supposedly a Stark and Lord Commander of the Night's Watch who 'fell in love' with a female Other and was slain by Brandon the Breaker, his brother. It makes no sense and I'm sorry. 
> 
> God this is so bad.

It was colder than usual.

Colder than it should have been.

Brandon walked through the snow, stained crimson with the blood of the fallen. There were thirteen cloaked corpses on the ground, and beneath his feet were a million shards of ice that were slowly blowing away in the winter wind.

The cold bitch was dead, killed by a black dagger that now glistened opalescent blue with her blood, and nothing remained that implied she had ever been alive in the first place. Then again, ‘alive’ was subjective to these things. Brandon wasn’t quite sure if calling them ‘alive’ was accurate.

_Let’s try this again._

The cold bitch was dead, and she had taken his brother with her. He was the thirteenth corpse, lying gruesomely dismembered and face-down in the snow. The spear was still lodged in his heart, and Brandon intended to keep it there. It wasn’t worth taking it back.

It was red on black on white, with the fresh blood of men who had died twice tainting the colors of cloak and snow alike. Brandon took a step forward and immediately noticed that the tracks he left were splotched with shades of pink. It was everywhere, like a macabre curse that ceased to be lifted.

He knew the stories of those creatures making terrible art out of the corpses of the men they slaughtered like animals, arranging them in strange symbols that seemed to taunt those witnessing them. However, this grim painting of corpses on snow was of his own making.

With another step and yet another bloody footprint, he wondered if he was any better than his brother in the end.

Brandon grabbed ahold of the iron door and gave it a massive pull, which only moved it slightly. The damn door was frozen solid, stuck to its post and refusing to budge. Nonetheless, Brandon persisted and tried again.

_Once more._

The cold bitch was dead, but his job was not done.

The boy was still in there, despite her brother’s and that monster’s nonsensical pleas that he had been taken away. _Taken away,_ Brandon thought as the door finally swung open, _maybe he should have been._ The interior of the tower was even colder than outside. There was something odd about the ice that had frozen on the walls and floor, which, rather than being translucent and white, had a strange, crystalline-blue hue to it, similar to that thing’s serrated knife. _Then he could be with the rest of his kind._

When she had come out of nowhere through the blinding storm, Brandon could have sworn on her face were blue droplets that had frozen to her cheeks with cold. She didn’t fight like the rest of her kind, as there was no real elegance or talent to the way she fought. No, she attacked him as if she feared that it was her last resort.

 _Those things don’t fear,_ Brandon reminded himself. _Those things don’t feel._

Brandon sauntered up the stairs, once again brandishing his black dagger as he did. He could hear the boy wailing from where he stood as if he were hungry or cold. _He doesn’t get cold,_ Brandon was convinced. _He probably doesn’t get hungry, either._  

Brandon was at first unsure as to where the child’s incessant wailing was coming from, but as he walked up the second flight of winding stairs and came to a room so cold that the frozen air threatened to freeze the water coating his eyes solid, he knew.

The room was completely empty apart from two things: a wooden crib and a rocking chair. They were at the left side of the strange room right beside an open window, and Brandon was struck with a sudden feeling in his chest that he could not describe.

 _Guilt?_ Maybe. When he came close enough to peer over the side of the crib and see a writhing baby boy with skin as pale as the moon and eyes blazing like blue fire, all it did was intensify. He knew what he had to do, but something about it felt wrong.          

Something about all of this felt wrong.

When the boy saw Brandon looking over him, his face suddenly softened, and his cries stopped. He smiled, just as babies often do, and giggled as though Brandon had been playing a game with him. He reached out and grabbed at the frigid air, cooing happily as snowflakes from the open window fell onto his little white nose.

He looked to be less than four months old, with only a few tufts of black hair sprouting atop his head. Brandon picked up the child gingerly and was met with no protest. The boy looked up at him and appeared happy as ever, unaware of the gruesome fate of his parents. He reached for the feathery cloak worn by his uncle, pawing at it and wiggling his tiny fingers as he did.

Cradling the boy with one arm and brandishing a blade with the other, Brandon had to stop and think. _The boy has black hair,_ Brandon noticed again. _He laughs, and he plays, just as a normal child would._

Brandon sheathed the knife and descended down both flights of stairs quite promptly, much to the baby’s delight. Brandon exited that cursed building and covered the boy’s eyes with the side of his cloak as he walked through the snow and back to his horse. He knew that the boy wouldn’t remember any of this, but it felt cruel to allow a child of any stock to see such things as his father butchered and his mother completely gone.

While he mounted his horse, the boy continued to giggle. He was still so small, and many of the Northmen were just as pale, so who would be able to tell? It was only those eyes of his that Brandon thought would be troublesome. They were brilliant sapphire, bluer than any human eyes could ever be, and almost seemed to glow like stars in the night. Brandon first wondered if he could blind the boy or someone keep his eyes covered, but that wouldn’t be enough.

As the towers and stone walls of Winterfell came into view, Brandon peered down at his infant nephew and gently poked his nose. “Dorren,” he said to the child, “your name shall be Dorren of House Stark.”


	2. Nephew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon Snow meets and old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place right after the events of A Dance With Dragons, or in TV show-terms, right after Season 5, I think. It sucks, I wrote it years ago, and I edited it the best I could.

Wind. The cracking of ice. Footsteps.

Wind, the cracking of ice, footsteps.

_Wind, the cracking of ice._

_Footsteps._

The soft whimpering of another living creature.

Jon Snow felt as though he were asleep, with heavy eyelids and limbs stiff as tree branches. All around him was the sensation of white cold, pinching his pale flesh and ruffling his hair despite the layers upon layers of furs he wore.

His first thought was that this was some kind of dream. He had once heard that dying men see their life flash before their eyes, but hadn’t believed it until now.

“He told me this day would come,” a voice, strangely familiar, said, although Jon’s eyes were still closed. He wasn’t quite sure if he could open them. “He told me, and I was a fool. I didn’t believe him.”

Jon still did not open his eyes.

“What kind of fool am I to not trust a king and a warg?” The slight laughter in his voice was cold and worried, bordering on sarcastic. Jon tried to open his eyes once more, and for a moment he did, but all he saw was the blinding descent of snow onto the already frozen earth.

Something was lost upon him like he had been born into this very moment in time and ceased to exist before it. Like everything else was a dream, and he was finally awake. Even with his sudden awareness, he could not move no matter how hard he tried.

Jon suddenly felt a pair of hands thread themselves under his arms and pull him up, followed by a loud whimper of complaint from beside him.

“Are you alright to walk?” The person holding onto him questioned. Jon made the conscious decision that he would keep his eyes open for as long as he could despite the exhaustion and the cold, assuming that doing so was enough.

He opened them for three seconds, and then five more before the world seemed to spin, and he nearly fell forward. The man beside him grabbed onto him before he could collapse, stabilizing him and all of a sudden placing hands on the sides of his face.

“Jon,” said the man, who Jon saw as only a blur, “getting out of this is going to take both of us, alright? I know it’s going to hurt, but we need to move. The second they blow the third blast, or even the _first,_ we’re as good as dead men.”

_Three blasts._

The man, who Jon could now see was dressed in the cloaks and furs of the Night’s Watch, placed his arm back under Jon’s shoulder and walked quickly forward. “He told me about everything.” The man added. “The Free Folk, the treason, even the Bolton bastard.”

And then there it was. The first blast. It was long and drawn out as if the man blowing it was attempting to refrain from blowing the second. _Or the third._

“ _Fuck,_ ” the man said under his breath. “Get on the front. We need to get as far away from this damned Wall as possible as _soon_ as possible.”

Jon’s eyes were mostly open now, and he felt the coarse fur of a horse in front of him. The man who had been assisting him half-lifted him up and hoisted him on top of the horse, which was saddle-less. The man then pulled himself up, and just as he did, the second blast echoed through the night.

Jon heard something slap against the side of the horse, which he presumed was the man’s hand. Whinnying, the horse broke into a run without any intention of stopping.

The third blast came just then, loud and clear, and with it came the sounds of panicked Brothers yelling to one another and asking the question of _what’s going on?_ While others demanded that they get to their posts.

That was the second time Jon had ever heard three blasts. It wasn’t widely known among the Night’s Watch what the third blast was for, and many probably assumed it was a mistake when blown. For a moment, even Jon thought it was a mistake, but it couldn’t have been. This man, whoever he was, knew that they would blow the horn a third time, for one reason or another.

“I promise you I’ll explain this all later,” he told Jon, holding onto him with one hand and holding the reins with the other. “That, or he will.”

_He?_

Jon wanted to ask who _he_ was but feared the answer.

“Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” The man asked. “If it hadn’t been for him, I would have never known you were still here. I assumed most of you died when the Free Folk attacked… He never told me you survived. And that you survived to become _Lord Commander,_ of all things.”

Jon could feel himself slipping in and out of consciousness as they rode on without opposition from anyone or anything, having passed the point where Jon could hear anything from the Wall.

“It seems you took more after me than your father,” the man told him with a slight laugh. “The cold never seemed to bother you or me, nor the humble life of the Night’s Watch.” He went on to say. “You are my nephew, after all, and a part of me is glad that after all this time we still managed to reunite, despite the circumstances.”

He continued to speak after that, but Jon was quickly fading. All he could think at that moment was what the man had called him.

_Nephew?_  


	3. A Hundred Pairs of Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon dreams of a strange man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter 3! Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Comments and kudos are much appreciated!

Benjen dismounted the black horse and stood by to assist Jon, who could hardly keep himself steady. “Careful, _careful,_ ” Benjen muttered in a hushed tone as he helped Jon sit against the trunk of a tree. His ice-blue eyes never once left Jon, watching intently as his nephew's wounded chest rose and fell with each painful breath. “You need to get some rest, Jon. We have a journey ahead of us.”

Jon watched as white smoke arose from his mouth as he let out each excruciating exhale, dispersing in the air like salt in water. He didn’t say a word, leaning the back of his head against the bark of the tree. He wanted to ask so many questions, some of which he couldn’t articulate. His eyelids were so unbearably heavy that blinking sent him into a brief state of unconsciousness, and he was desperately trying not to give in. 

He couldn’t sleep. Not now, not like this. He knew he wasn’t safe, or at least he was reasonably certain of that. The darkness beyond the Wall was safe for no man of mortal blood. 

“Light a fire,” Jon choked out. That was all he could manage. “The Others…”

“Don’t worry about the Others,” Benjen answered somewhat promptly as if he knew Jon would say that. He was kneeling a patch of snow on the ground, setting aside a buckskin messenger bag and opening the flap. Jon watched with intent grey eyes as Benjen pulled out a crooked, black dagger the size of a grown man's palm, turning it around in his hand and watching as the light of the moon reflected from its multifaceted surface.  “They won’t bother us here.”

 

Jon parted his lips to ask  _why,_ but found even the action of inhaling to speak too strenuous to perform. He placed a quaking arm over his abdomen, his facial expression twisted in pain as he gripped one of the open wounds on the side of his stomach. He gritted his teeth, grinding them together as agonizing physical discomfort halted his ability to breath. He forced in his breaths as if he were a drowning man during a hurricane fighting against crashing waves to choke in a few gulps of air, fighting against the tightening of his lungs. 

 

"... _Bandages, bandages, where are they_?" Benjen murmured to himself as he dug through the contents of his bag. "... _He said there would be no bleeding._ " 

 

Jon cleared his throat, tasting a slight metallic flavor arising from his esophagus. He sucked on the blood-infused spit in swimming in his mouth, groaning when the sweetness grew bitter. "I'm fine," Jon rasped as his uncle searched for the scarce commodity.

 

Jon closed his eyes, only intending to rest for a moment as Benjen continued. His uncle’s words from minutes ago rang through his ears like a broken bell, vibrating around his brain and tugging at his heart. _Don’t worry about the Others,_ Benjen Stark had said to him, _they won’t bother us here._

 

 _Might they not bother me because I am a corpse?_ Jon pondered, clenching his eyes shut as he did. " _Mmm,_ " Jon whined deep in his gullet, attempting to push the thought away.  _The Others despise the living, but I am not alive._

Cold hands wrapped around his body and pulled the raven locks of his hair, caressing his face and marking his flesh. Blue eyes stared into Jon’s grey ones, burning with an intensity that seemed too powerful for any human or mortal. The mesmerizing irises of this milk-skinned individual twisted and swirled as though there was an ocean within them rising and receding like the tides. Jon took note of how still this being was able to stand. Humans, no matter how hard they tried not to, were always moving. They breathed and blinked and twitched, _especially_ when they were trying not to.

This being, presumably a man, did not breathe or blink or twitch.

Jon could not explain it, but he was not afraid.

Over their heads were the extended branches of a red-leafed tree, tall and white with bleeding eyes carved into its bark. The leaves trembled in the frozen wind as snow entangled in Jon’s hair, landing on the lashes of his eyes and ceasing to melt.

This figure’s spindly, white fingers were now holding onto the sides of Jon’s face and holding it rather affectionately, and the intensity in his eyes turned to a sudden sadness. His azure gaze shifted down and his pale brow furrowed.

Jon reached up to touch the man’s freezing hand that was pressed to his left cheek but stopped.

“I’m so sorry,” was all he said before the wind force picked up dramatically. Jon’s hair blew over his face, thus obscuring his view, and the light snowfall quickly turned into a violent blizzard. The sky was white and black with snow and darkness, and for a moment Jon thought that the man had disappeared. He no longer felt his hands in his hair, on his face, or around his shoulders, but he hadn’t heard him leave.

Jon looked forward.

A hundred pairs of glowing eyes stared at him from the white bark of the tree, unblinking and unwavering. Ninety-nine were red.

One was blue.

 

Jon awoke with a start, sitting up and expecting the world around him to be enveloped in night. However, it was not. It seemed that dawn had just risen, and Benjen was kneeling over a small fire cooking what appeared to be a squirrel on a blackened stick. Jon wondered what caused Benjen to finally give in to starting a fire, as he had so vehemently denied that any outside forces would be an issue. 

Ghost was lying beside Jon and resting his head right on his master's lap, breathing softly and giving his tail a gentle wag when he patted his matted, white head.

“You’re up,” Benjen commented. “Good.”

Benjen pulled the charred rodent away from the open flame and tore off one of its back legs. He leaned over, attempting to hand it to Jon, but he sat there in the snow, unmoving and silent.

“You need to eat,” Benjen told him. “You don’t know when your next meal will be.”

 

 _The dead mustn't eat,_ Jon ruminated. 

 

Jon, at first, didn’t answer, for fear that he would say exactly what he had thought. “Where are we going?” He finally asked.

“I can’t say,” Benjen answered. “All you need to know is that it’s safe. The chances of any Rangers finding you out there is… _Miniscule._ ”

“ _Out there?_ ” Jon questioned.

“Up north,” Benjen told him. “That’s all I can say.”

“A village?” Jon proposed. He figured that, considering Benjen was still alive after all this time (which was a whole story of its own,) he had to have integrated into a Free Folk tribe of some sort. The thought made Jon still uneasy, but less so than the idea that they were staying out here alone.

“Something like that, yes,” Benjen responded. “But even farther north. They’ll be traveling south sometime soon, or at least they were supposed to, and I was supposed to go with them.” He explained. “That was around the time he found out what happened to you.”

Jon thought back to the night before. _For the Watch,_ they had all said to him, one by one. His Brothers.

And yet by some unholy precedent, he was alive.

“How did you know to find me?” Jon asked.

Benjen’s face grew suddenly forlorn and severe. “That isn’t for me to tell.” He said bleakly. “That’s for _him_ to explain.”

“Who is _he?_ ” Jon asked.

“All you need to know is that he saved my life,” Benjen told him, reaching out to give him the squirrel leg once more. “You have to eat, Jon. There’s no use in starving yourself.”

 Jon did not protest. He took hold of the rodent leg, biting into the burnt flesh and tearing off a piece of the gamey meat.

“We’ll have plenty of time to catch up while we’re there,” Benjen told him as he ate. “It’ll all make sense soon.”

 

Benjen piled snow onto the flames to choke it out, leaving a steaming mass of charred sticks and half-melted ice as the only indication that anyone had been here. Jon attempted to stand, using the trunk of the tree to pull himself up, but felt a stabbing pain in his chest as he did. He crumbled to the ground once again, and Benjen was quick to grab him under the shoulders and pull him up.

Benjen, grabbing Jon’s right arm and pulling it over his shoulder, dragged him through the snow. Ghost followed close by, standing right beside Jon in case he fell. As he led him through the trees, Ghost’s hackles raised and his teeth were bared.

Jon immediately knew what Ghost was so dismayed by when he looked forward and saw a rotting horse standing upright in the snow, chained to a pike nailed into the ground. Its jaw was completely unhinged, revealing rotting pink flesh that hung in clumps and strips. Its main was almost completely torn off, and its haunches were covered in bite marks that looked vaguely human.

Jon expected Benjen to draw his blade or become alert, but he did neither.

“It’s alright,” Benjen assured him. “He’s mine.”


	4. Blue Eyes, Pale Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Benjen arrive at the destination, where Jon learns the beginning of a terrifying secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter 4, gang. I think we, uh, all need to recover after the series finale, so here's this. It isn't much, and it sucks, but here it is. Even though the show has ended, I'm going to continue to post, because why not? Love you guys! Your comments and kudos give me life!

The snow was cold and harsh against Jon’s skin, freezing his blood and turning his bones to ice. Benjen held tightly onto him, seeming completely unfazed by the biting cold and the winter winds that blew through his hair and nearly blinded his eyes.

“It should only be a few days’ journey from here,” Benjen yelled through the intense winds and blinding snow.

Jon didn’t know what ‘a few days’ could mean at this point, as the darkness taking ahold of the horizon seemed permanent. Jon felt as though it had been weeks since Benjen found him at the Wall, even though he had seen the sun rise and set less than four times. At some point, the sun stopped rising to greet the morning, and the amount of time Jon and Benjen had been riding grew increasingly ambiguous.  

The last time he slept, he was plagued with a strange nightmare that returned each time he closed his eyes. It was incessant, and without fail, he would see those piercing blue eyes each time he nodded off into sleep. The sight of them would be enough for him to force himself awake.

Jon, from here, figured that things couldn’t get much worse. He had no idea how far north he and Benjen were but dearly hoped that the end of their journey was near.

He was, unfortunately, incorrect.

 

After what Benjen informed Jon had been several days, the blizzard had not stopped. It did not get any worse, though, and what ended up _truly_ getting worse was Jon’s condition. Every time the undead horse moved, Jon felt stabbing pains in his sides and wherever one of his wounds had been. He didn’t dare tell Benjen, as that may prompt him to halt their travels. Benjen had offered to do so before, noticing the way Jon could barely keep his head up and how he winced every time the rotting steed made a turn, but Jon insisted on continuing on.

Jon had barely eaten in the past few days, and what he had consumed was nothing but charred scraps that Benjen had kept from their last actual meal.

Benjen, on the other hand, had eaten nothing. He had only bothered to drink water from a wineskin and never expressed his hunger, but Jon knew it was there. He had traveled with enough starving men to see through the façade of one that was denying his hunger, and without fail, there was always a moment in which they cracked.

“ _We’re almost there, just hang on!_ ” Benjen exclaimed. Jon wasn’t sure how Benjen had determined this, considering the low visibility and the raging winds. There was nothing around to indicate the time or their location, as everything that could have done so was glazed over with white. There was no sun anymore, not even a moon, and the sky was white with spots of black rather than the reverse. The sun had never bothered to rise, even now, and yet Benjen insisted that days had passed.

Days had passed, as previously specified, and still, Jon nor Benjen had slept. Jon, of course, had his moments where he passed out from pain or exhaustion but awoke several minutes later feeling even wearier than before. Benjen had woken him up more than once, telling him not to fall asleep, for fear that he would not wake up. It made sense to Jon, although the sentiment did nothing to relieve the exhaustion that plagued Jon’s eyes.

As much as he tried not to, he thought almost solely of the searing pain and discomfort in his abdomen, now burning and stinging as if he had been burned. He could feel something dripping from several of the wounds, trickling down his stomach and freezing on his skin.

“ _Just a moment longer,_ ” Benjen told him. “ _It won’t be long now._ ”

Jon’s skin had become moist and pale, reeling from infection and exhaustion. He knew that he looked unwell, and felt it, too, and the idea that he should have died back there on the Wall frequently came through his mind. Then he wouldn’t be here in the piercing cold, suffering even more from these open wounds than he originally had, and it would all be over.

_It would all be over._

The horse came to a sharp halt, backing up and sharply whinnying as though it had been spooked. As Jon looked about, he noticed that the winds had mostly halted, and the blizzard had changed to rather gentle snowfall. Light fog rolled over the cliff at which they stood, and although the sun was not present, the moon shone above head, beautiful and full. Blue stars shimmered and blinked over the horizon, twinkling like sapphires in the night, and bathing the remote valley below in soft, glowing light.

Below the cliff was a small ‘camp’ of some sort, possessing tents of animal skin and the silhouettes of people walking through the snow with ease. _Wildlings?_ Jon assumed, watching as the figures moved about through their camp.

He quickly noticed that many of them were not wearing cloaks, animal skins, or anything to keep themselves warm, and several were adorned in nothing but robes or gowns. The people standing along the outskirts of the village were wearing armor, from what Jon could tell, and wielding spears rather than the Wildling-favored clubs or maces.

Benjen exhaled. “We’re here.”

Jon tried to ask about what this place was. He tried to ask if they were safe here. He tried to ask who those people were.

But he couldn’t.

It was as if his jaw had been locked shut, holding his words captive. His vision got increasingly blurry, almost as though he were looking through a glass, and his hands loosened from the reigns of the horse.

“Jon, are you alright? Benjen asked, grabbing his nephew’s shoulders. “Jon?”

When he fell from the horse’s back and collapsed into the snow, all he could hear were Benjen’s desperate pleas for him to _stay with him_. On top of that, Jon heard a horn being blown in the background from the camp.

One blast.

Two blasts.

_Three blasts._

 

“Why is he so little?” A high-pitched, feminine voice questioned as freezing hands poked and prodded at Jon’s exposed chest. “I thought Octavian said he was one of us.”

“Silence, Domitia,” another harsher, although still presumably womanly, voice snapped back. “I do not recall allowing you to speak.”

“His hair is black,” another voice said.

“I can see that Vita, I’m not blind,” the second woman answered.

Jon forced his tired eyes open to catch a glimpse of the women who were tending to him with freezing hands and inappropriate comments. He wasn’t exactly sure what he expected, but nonetheless, his immediate reaction was one of aggression.

In his hands when he forced himself to sit up was the white throat of a woman pale as snow and taller than he was. Her sapphire-blue eyes were full of fear and shock as she scratched at his face with clawed, white fingers, choking out incoherent pleas for mercy. Without warning, Jon was grabbed by the hair and pulled back by another woman, this one lacking any feeling in her eyes other than hate. She clenched an inhumanly strong fist around his neck, just as Jon had done to her comrade, and slammed him down back to where he had previously been laying.

The young woman Jon had attacked was being held by the third girl, while the one with her hands tightening around Jon’s neck bore fang-like canine teeth that dripped like that of a rabid animal as her jaw clenched with rage.

When she finally released him, Jon was left gasping for breath and unable to move. “If you ever presume to lay your hands on one of our own again, I swear to you a thousand times over that I will harm you more than you could ever harm us,” the woman told him through gritted teeth. “The King should have butchered your uncle the moment he found him, and you should hope he doesn’t change his mind because of your incompetence.”

“Nara, that’s enough,” the first woman squeaked out. “He was just _frightened_.”

“Horrible things have happened because their kind was _frightened_ by us,” Nara told her. “He shouldn’t even be here.”

“He can’t understand you, Nara, it’s no use threatening him,” the girl told her meekly.

“No,” Nara answered, looming over Jon and furrowing her brow. “He understands.”

 

After the three women had left, Jon fell effortlessly asleep. He did not dream, not even of those pale blue eyes, but when he eventually awoke, the fear in his heart returned. Kneeling beside him was that snow-skinned woman, Nara, placing bandages over Jon’s wounds and whispering a strange prayer into his flesh.

“You’re awake,” commented, sitting in a rotting wooden chair that looked older than Jon. “Good.”

Nara stood up and began walking away, but before she could reach the opening of the tent, Benjen grabbed her by the forearm. He leaned in and whispered something that made Nara smile and blush blue, much to Benjen’s apparent amusement. She at first placed her hands on the sides of his face, about to kiss him, when she peered over at Jon and sighed.

“I will return later to check on his wounds,” Nara told Benjen quietly, before holding up the hem of her robes and walking through the opening of the tent.

There was a prolonged silence between Jon and his uncle that neither of them acknowledged for quite a while until Benjen spoke up. “How are you feeling?”

Jon did not wish to answer. The feeling of freezing-cold hands over his wounds and around his neck kept coming back to him, striking primal fear into his heart. Even so, Jon’s desire for answers overpowered his fear of what they might entail. “Who are those people?” He asked, although he already knew the answer.

“You know who they are, Jon,” Benjen answered solemnly.

Jon attempted to sit up. “But… _Why_?” He demanded.

Benjen pursed his lips. “These people saved my life, Jon,” Benjen began. “I was part of a ranging party that left and never came back. We had been attacked by a group of Wildlings. Members of the Ice-River Clans, I believe. The eaters of the deceased.” He explained. “I was the only survivor, but just barely. They would have butchered me just like the rest of them if the Others hadn’t already been stalking the Wildlings nearby.”

Jon looked away from his uncle. “Why didn’t they attack you?” Jon asked reluctantly.

Benjen’s gaze suddenly grew somber and severe in a way that Jon recognized from his father. His sea-blue eyes stared into Jon’s soul like sapphire orbs, waiting for him to make the connection. The paleness of his flesh rivaled that of the snow beneath his feet, and so did Jon’s. All of the Stark children had that skin, and most had those eyes. “I believe you’ll understand when you’re ready,” Benjen told him. “It took me so long to finally come to terms with it, but… I know you will.”


	5. The Name of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon meets a strange being in the confines of a nearby weirwood grove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry the chapter is late.
> 
> I described some of the Others in this as having antlers??? for some reason??? Because I guess when I was writing this I just said "fuck canon" and went with what I thought when I heard the Others described as "the Sidhe made of ice." 
> 
> love you guys! comments and kudos give me life!

When Nara came back to redress Jon’s wounds, he was barely awake. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep for, and the darkness outside gave no inclination of how long it had been, either. Jon could have been asleep for minutes, hours, days… He had no way of knowing, and he didn’t bother trying to ask.

“If you ever try to lay a hand on me or anyone else,” Nara began, her voice harsh although rather quiet, “I won’t hesitate to make that the last time you have hands.”

Jon couldn’t think of any way to respond. He figured that doing so would just make her angrier than she already was.

As she stood up to leave, Jon heard the sound of skin grabbed skin halting her movements. When he looked up, he saw Benjen holding onto Nara’s wrist. She did not seem frightened in the least by him and even smiled as if she were amused. He whispered something to Nara that made her playfully smack his shoulder, about to respond before she turned her head to the side.

Someone from the encampment was calling to her, beckoning her to go outside.

“I’ll assume that means we’ll meet again later?” Benjen asked her as she walked away.

“Yes, of course,” Nara answered, sounding partially sarcastic. “I’m sure you’re more interesting than some corpses, but I’m obligated to leave at the moment.”

“Depends on the corpse,” Benjen answered before sitting down in that rotting wooden chair that had been kept in the tent since he and Jon arrived there. He unlatched a wineskin from his belt, reaching down to hand it to Jon. “You should drink something,” he told him quietly, his tone ultimately shifting from the rather cheerful one just a moment prior to a quite serious one. “You’ve been asleep for a while.”

Jon didn’t answer.

Benjen shifted his weight in the chair before placing the wineskin in the snow beside his feet. “I could find you something to eat, you know. I bet you’re hungry,” he told Jon.

Still, no response from his rather stricken nephew.

Benjen’s expression changed once more from serious to somber, as though he was in mourning. He sighed deeply, eyeing Jon with bright blue eyes. “Jon,” Benjen began, taking a second without saying anything at all. “I feel terrible that you found out this way. I wanted the King to tell you.”

Jon held an arm across his aching abdomen and propped himself up on his free hand. “It wouldn’t—” Jon grunted with pain as he tried to continue. He clenched his eyes shut, breathing shakily in and out of his nose as he sat fully upright. “It wouldn’t have mattered who told me.”

Jon told him. “What matters is that you seem perfectly fine with it.”

“Tell me honestly, Jon,” Benjen responded, his gaze softening and his brow becoming furrowed. “Why shouldn’t I be fine with it?”

Jon felt his heart skip a beat when he heard those words come out from his uncle’s lips. The Others were cold monsters of legend that fought against the ancient Starks and other Northmen, only to return thousands of years later to continue what they never finished. Unruly, brutal, and strange, the Others were in possession of no traits any human would be glad to have. _Especially not a Northerner,_ Jon added to his list of reasons. Even with all of this proof, all Jon could manage was, “they’re _monsters_.”

“Because they sought to ‘invade’ the realms of men? Or because of their ability to thrive in the dark of night and the cold embrace of winter?” Benjen questioned, his words striking Jon in the heart like a cold, steel dagger. “By that right, are they no different than the Free Folk?” He almost smiled when he said this. “You seem to have quite the affinity for the Free Folk, and if I recall correctly, you found some kinship among them. If that’s not it, then what is it, Jon? Is it the legends Old Nan told you as a wee lad, speaking of kings that froze in their castles and women smothering their babes in the night? As a young man, do you still believe those fairytales?”

“You said they were marching south, Benjen,” Jon responded. “They have a whole army of walking corpses just to snuff out the rest of humanity. How is that not enough proof that this _isn’t right_?”

Benjen smiled then, for real this time. “Can I show you something?” He asked, reaching out a hand for Jon to take.

 

Benjen had given Jon his cloak to wear around his bare chest and shoulders before they left the old tent, serving more as something to cover his wounds than anything to keep him warm. It was obviously still night, but people were working and living as though it wasn’t.

A small being ran past Jon, chasing a small, unidentified rodent that was lacking a tail and was missing a chunk of flesh from its side, calling to it like one would to a dog.

This creature appeared to be a child, standing a few heads shorter than Jon and calling the decomposing rat overexaggerated nicknames that could only be coined from the mind of a young boy.

He was ghost-pale and quicker than any human child, practically pouncing on his undead rodent like a playful fox kit. He cupped the helpless creature in his hands, using his long, thin fingers and claw-like nails as a cage. His hair was just as white as his flesh and only went right below his ears, which were long and pointed. Of course, his wide, innocent eyes were sapphire-blue and seemed to shimmer like stars when he blinked.

He, of course, wasn’t the only one of his kind occupying this space. Jon saw two blade-wielding warriors both wearing heavy, opalescent, luminous armor that shifted in color every time they moved. One of the warriors, a man with long hair that fell in loose waves and a scraggly beard that hung at the breastplate of his armor, had large, elk-like antlers that protruded from his scalp like the white branches from off a weirwood tree. The other swordsmen, who (strangely enough) appeared to be female, lacked these antlers.

Jon then shifted his attention to a young girl walking beside a tall woman, clinging to her leg fearfully as her mother pulled a shambling Wight on a black chain. “Don’t be afraid,” her mother told her. “The dead are nothing to fear.”

Jon saw two antlered men, both wearing the same strange armor, sitting on two separate tree stumps and laughing with shrill, cold voices as the man on the left told a strange tale of a peculiar Wildling woman and a town called Hardhome.

“What are you trying to show me?” Jon asked, turning to look at his uncle.

“What do you _think_ I’m trying to show you?” Benjen asked him in a hushed tone.

Jon felt the sharp rasps of the Others’ voices penetrating his eardrums and embedding in his mind, challenging all the stories and the legends and the old wive’s tales of blood-lusting killers and ravenous monsters.

These children behaved just as normal children would. They laughed, and they played, chasing around an undead rat and falling in the snow.

These warriors behaved just as normal warriors would. They sparred and told odd stories that made you cringe internally, questioning the credibility of their strange tales.

These mothers behaved just as normal mothers would. They tried to comfort their young daughters when they were afraid and shooed off the young men that vied for their attention, scolding their sons when they played too rough or when they accidentally pulled the rat in two.

 _They aren’t normal,_ Jon told himself, sickened that he even thought of such things. _They’re unnatural monsters of cold and ice._

It was just then that Jon noticed something that utterly terrified him and shook him down to his core.

He wasn’t cold anymore.

He looked at Benjen again, heart racing in his chest. “You said something about there being a king of some sort, yes?” He asked. “And you said he’d know the truth?”

“Well, _yes,_ ” Benjen answered. “I wanted him to be the one to tell you the truth, but that isn’t possible. If you wish to speak with him, I… I don’t believe that’s possible.”

Jon paused, although his chest still burned with anxiety and sweat rolled off his forehead. “Why not?”

Benjen sighed, staring out into the distance. “He’s… _Difficult,_ among other things.” Benjen admitted, taking a step forward. Jon followed, ignoring the slight pain in his abdomen. “He’s somewhat of a recluse, in all honesty. He’s kept himself alone in the nearby weirwood grove for eight millennia. He’s only spoken to three people in the last eight-thousand or so years, and is rather cold in his interactions.”

“Of course, he’s _cold,_ ” Jon answered, half-serious as he followed slowly behind his uncle. “He’s an Other.”

 

Benjen opened the door of a small, wooden house slowly and without knocking as if it were his own. _Maybe it is,_ Jon thought to himself. _He doesn’t seem to care about the implications of any of this._

“I see you brought the crow,” a familiar voice commented bitterly. Nara was sitting on the wooden floor in the pitch darkness, cradling a small child in her arms that squirmed and cooed as she looked down at it.

“Nara, _please,_ ” Benjen told her, but not harshly.

She said nothing in response.

The young child Nara was holding against her breast was pale and sapphire-eyed, just like its mother. The only thing peculiar about it was the fact that it had tufts of raven black hair rather than ghost white.

Jon whipped his head around to look at Benjen, as if to tell him, _you couldn’t have._

But, as it appeared, he did.

“This is my son,” Benjen told Jon, not meeting his glance. “His name is Ned.”

 

Jon was outside now, despite the fact that he and Benjen had just entered that wooden cottage. He trudged through the snow and shielding his eyes from the blinding white that fell heavy to the frozen earth. _The world truly has gone mad,_ Jon thought to himself. _Or maybe I’m actually dead, and this is my punishment._

“ _Jon!_ ” Benjen called to him, but Jon did not stop. “You won’t get very far, you know.”

He stopped.

“The Lands of Always Winter stretch for miles, Jon. Imagine traveling all the way back to the Wall without a horse and without someone else to make the journey with.” Benjen tried to reason with him. “You’d _die._ And if you didn’t die during your journey, you’d be immediately murdered the second you arrived at the Wall.”

Jon’s hands quaked, but not because he was cold. Something about all of this, with the Others and Benjen and baby Ned, was absolutely absurd and distressing, so much so that Jon figured this had to be some kind of cruel punishment from the Gods. It couldn’t have been real. There was no way.

“All your life, you felt like an outsider in your own home. When you finally found somewhere that seemed safe, you were murdered. All of these atrocities were done by humans, the kind you claim to be your kin, and yet your hatred lies with the White Walkers,” Benjen yelled to him. “You don’t have to be a bastard and a crow anymore, Jon.”

“ _I’m not one of you,_ ” Jon muttered under his breath as Benjen spoke. “ _I never will be._ ”

“Why do you despise the White Walkers simply because you’ve _heard stories_?” Benjen asked him, out of breath.

“They _invaded_ Westeros solely for the purpose of conquest!” Jon turned around and answered, his face burning with frustration.

Benjen took a step closer to his distraught nephew and continued on until he could place his hands on Jon’s shoulders. “They were here first, Jon.”

 

Benjen took Jon inside without another word from either of them, although the silence left so many questions unanswered for Jon. Benjen’s words left Jon feeling inexplicably uneasy, although he was no longer shaking with rage and fear. Jon sat on the floor, and Benjen knelt down and handed him his wineskin and a piece of bread.

Jon almost didn’t take either.

Still, Jon could not deny the hunger in his stomach or the dryness of his mouth and took both in opposite hands. The two said nothing as Jon slowly ate and drank, both listening to the winter storm raging on outside. After he finished, Benjen stood. “You still need to rest,” he told him. “I’ll come and wake you in a few hours. I can understand how this situation isn’t ideal, but… We all must learn to cope with the things that we don’t wish to.”

Benjen left right after that.

At first, Jon tried to sleep. He tried lying down and thinking of absolutely nothing, but that only made him more stressed. When Ghost creeped out from another room in the cottage and nudged Jon up, he knew sleep was nowhere for him to find.

Jon stood and peered out the closed glass window. Outside was a beautiful scene of evergreen trees and pristine, untouched snow, but that wasn’t what Jon was looking for. When his eyes were caught on a circle of red and white sitting atop a steep cliff, he knew he had found it, and glanced back at Ghost.

The storm still raged on, making it harder and harder for Jon to navigate uphill as Ghost served as his form of walking support. He leaned on the side of his direwolf to prevent himself from collapsing, either from the increasingly harsh winds or the dull pain in his chest. Still, he couldn’t quit now. If he quit, he would have to trek down this hill feeling quite unsatisfied and even more exhausted than before, so he decided against it. This was all he wanted now, as everything else was still out of reach.

 _Maybe he’ll kill me,_ Jon thought. _Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad._

He stopped where the green trees faded into red ones, and the snow quieted, leaving only the image of rustling crimson leaves being doused in moonlight. Along with that, there was a man dressed entirely in black rather than iridescent armor.

When Jon saw him, he took a step back.

“ _Oh,_ ” Jon muttered to himself, although he did not know why. His first instinct was to hide behind something, but the only thing vaguely Jon-sized was Ghost, and that would just be completely idiotic.

The being standing before Jon was tall and thin, just as the rest of his people were, but there was something strangely ethereal about him that made Jon truly wonder if he was some kind of deity. _Death,_ Jon supposed, _he is the god of Death._ As he thought this, he wondered why Death would take the form of a strikingly beautiful, almost ghost-like being that seemed so calm and collected as he ran his clawed, white fingers through the blood-colored leaves of the weirwood trees.

“Lord Commander Jon Snow,” was all Death said in a smooth, toneless voice. “Or, perhaps you would rather me call you simply ‘Jon,’ considering recent events.”

Jon didn’t know what to say.

“Oh, I do sincerely hope I haven’t mistaken you for someone else,” he gave a slight, fanged smile that made Jon heave a breath. “Pardon my manners. I haven’t met many of your kind that have refrained from swinging an axe at my head for this long. Consider me truly flattered.”

Jon genuinely could not tell if this man was joking or not. Something about his tone was so serious and somber, as though he were telling the saddest story of woe in the world, but his words were becoming increasingly joking and sarcastic. Although he would never admit it, the strange vocal mannerisms of this being flustered him, to the point where he was at a loss for words.

“Y-you’re right,” Jon answered him with a slight stutter in his voice. “It’s… _Jon_.”

“You seem quite unsure of that,” the ghastly Other king answered. “You speak your own name as if it is a question.”

“M-my apol— _uh,_ my apologies,” Jon breathed. “How, _um,_ rude of me.”

“Oh, don’t act as though I’m some southern king eager to behead a man for being _embarrassed,_ ” the king answered. “Imagine that. Beheading every man who stutters when speaking, or says my name wrong, or is a terrible singer.”

“Are you… Are you the king?” Jon asked.

The man turned to face Jon. “Sometimes.”

“W-what do you mean?” Jon questioned, confused and trying to keep his cheeks from turning wine red as he eyed the man’s smooth, snow-colored skin and eyes set ablaze with blue fire.

“I am only a _king_ when they need me,” the man explained, wandering slowly forward. “The rest of the time, I’m a Greenseer. Or a warg. Or maybe I’m just a strange man who whispers his secrets to the trees and instructs them not to tell.”

“Is there… A name you would rather me use?” Jon asked, immediately regretting it. _You can’t just ask a monarch his true name,_ Jon scolded himself.

The man sighed and smiled again, this time not bearing any teeth. “Hadrian.”

 


	6. I Hope To See You Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has a conversation with Death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, heres the chapter. Sorry it's late, I just got out of school! Your comments and kudos give me life UwU

Now that Death has a name, the tone of our story shall shift just a little bit. Death was not a skeleton cloaked in dark rags wielding a steel scythe, and instead took the form of a mystifyingly and darkly alluring ethereal being that spoke to bleeding trees and lived amongst the dead. One thing that shall be important to understand, especially later on, is that there must always be Death. Death doesn’t always have a name, but he is always there. Another thing that shall be important to understand is that Death _cannot die._ He has been here for thousands of years, watching, waiting, and living the lives of men he was just waiting to meet.

He never did like the title of “King.” He didn’t want it in the first place, all those years ago. The concept of “want” was something of a mystery to this being, as such desires never got him anywhere. Thus, he didn’t exactly “want” anything, let alone the title of King.

He was but an entity of the ancient times when there was no distinction between Kingdoms at all, and the only things one could rule were night and day. _There are enough Kings of the Day,_ Death had thought when he realized there was no logical way to get out of his title without abandoning his people altogether. _So, I guess that makes me the King of the Night_.

““Is there… A name you would rather me use?” The young crow asked. His fear was nearly amusing, as it was quite misplaced. Nonetheless, he was granted sympathy, as mankind has _always_ been afraid of Death.

Death softly smiled to ease this frightful child’s anxiety, although he knew it would make no difference. He had seen this boy in his visions many times across many years, even before his birth. The dark curls of his hair and the storm grey of his eyes were traits that he had never noticed before, and all he could think was _he looks just like Brandon._

“Hadrian,” he responded, unblinking and still.

The Stark boy looked rather taken aback.

 _He’s not a Stark,_ Hadrian remembered, _but he will be._

“ _H-Hadrian_?” Jon stammered in response, as though he had told a lie. Death cannot lie, not by his nature. What would there be to lie about, after all?

“I have many names, but that is one,” Hadrian responded. “Does such a concept come as a shock, little crow?”

Jon heaved a breath and looked away as the flesh on his cheeks turned a warm shade of pink. His white wolf stayed alert behind its master, watching Hadrian with accusing eyes.

“I apologize if I offended—”

Hadrian took a light step forward. He left no footprint. “You cannot _offend_ me, Jon Snow.”

He was standing only a few steps away from Jon, but close enough to feel the clouds of his breath plume and fade from his lips. As he got closer, Hadrian noticed the small details of this young man’s face that may become critical later.

 

  * He had a permanently sullen expression
  * He was small; thin, short, and appearing younger than he was
  * His eyes were metal grey



 

The boy’s wolf bore dagger-like teeth as Hadrian approached his young owner, backing up like a spooked horse as pale hands reached out to touch the black of Jon’s cloak. He could feel human warmth under those furs, pulsing and lively, although strange and foreign to Hadrian. Well, not entirely foreign, but it had been a while.

After several silent and fleeting moments of a pale, clawed hand curving around the side of Jon’s shoulder, Hadrian released the warmth of his arm and watched his nervous silver eyes find his own azure gaze.

“It’s been so long since the Stark bloodline has been pure,” Hadrian commented, taking another step back. “Your blood is almost as warm as a Southerner’s.”

Jon looked somewhat baffled at that comment, even though he absolutely knew what it meant.

“Every House of Westeros has a sentence that belongs only to _them_ ,” Hadrian commented, turning slowly around to face the mountain peak facing north and the largest weirwood tree in the grove. Red leaves all around him quaked and rustled, as though they were cowering in fear as their keeper approached the tallest one. “As High as Honor. Fire and Blood. _Hear Me Roar,_ ” Hadrian added, watching as red sap dripped from the carved eyes and lips of the tree. “All reflect the history of the House they belong to.” When Hadrian placed a hand, the one that had touched the warmth of Jon’s shoulder, on the side of the tree’s bloody features, veins of frost grew beneath it. “Your House’s words have no mentions of war, family, or battle prowess. _Winter is Coming,_ say banners and placards, portrayed as a warning for centuries. Was it ever a warning?”

“I-I’m not so sure what you mean,” Jon asked as frost branched out along the white bark of the massive tree. “I’m not a Stark, after all. I’m a bastard.”

“You were raised as one, boy,” Hadrian insisted, looking at the human sideways. “Tell me, Jon Snow, what do you know of your House words?”

Jon pushed through the weighted snow to approach Hadrian, clutching his abdomen as he did so. That was something Hadrian noticed him doing ever since he came to this accursed place, and the cause brought a cold hatred up within the frozen cavity in his chest that would have been his heart. _I remember,_ Hadrian told himself. _I will never forget._

When Jon and Hadrian were shoulder-to-shoulder, Jon finally answered. “They’re a warning, aren’t they? A warning of the Long Night?”

Hadrian smiled. Or, rather, his lips curved slightly upward. Hadrian seldom ‘smiled,’ as excitement or genuine happiness was what such expressions were for, and those things weren’t meant for Death. “Not a warning, per se,” he explained, removing his hand from the face of the tree. “Not when it was first spoken.”

Hadrian felt Jon tense up. “When it was first spoken?”

“Eight thousand years ago,” Hadrian explained, peering into the unblinking crimson eyes of the weirwood that should have been silver. “By the last Stark to not be of Other blood.”

Hadrian recalled that time as though it were just yesterday. That man he mentioned was something more than a ‘legendary hero,’ although the stories of his life had faded into myth.

“If I have Other blood, why can I cross the Wall?” Jon asked.

“You have life in your veins,” Hadrian explained to him, drying a crimson tear from the face of the weirwood tree. “Others do not.”

Hadrian knew this boy had a million unanswered questions and that he was struggling to articulate them, considering their implications. He knew exactly what he was going to ask and why, but Hadrian knew he didn’t truly wish to have the answer revealed to him.

Nonetheless, Death would not lie. Death _cannot_ lie, after all.

But alas, the tired Ranger had arrived to retrieve his fearful nephew from the grove, and he was less than thrilled to see him conversing with Death. Most half-decent guardians would be.

“Jon—”

“It’s alright, Benjen, he hasn’t caused me any offense,” Hadrian answered, turning to face the other human. “You Starks worry too much. You’re all so solemn and anxious, it must get tiresome.”

The Starks seemed to be easily flustered, as the expression on Benjen’s face turned from legitimately concerned to somewhat embarrassed. _Maybe it’s from all that time of being ruled over by Southern kings,_ Hadrian presumed. _That’d do it._

“You could have hurt yourself, climbing all this way up here…” Benjen told his nephew, sauntering up to his side. Jon did not meet his eyes when he placed two gloved hands on his shoulders, staring down at his dog instead. “You could have gotten yourself _killed_.”

“Don’t be too hard on the boy, Benjen,” Hadrian instructed, reaching out a hand. “All he wanted was answers. You brought a young crow to a tribe of Others and half-expected him to be alright with it. Next, you informed him that he shares blood with strange beings of cold and death and are surprised when he searches for answers. Let him be.”

Benjen nodded, but his eyes never left Jon’s blushing face. The young man really was quite amusing to watch, with all his various expressions being tainted with ruby red tones.

“Before you go,” Hadrian began, his eyes fixating on Jon’s pink cheeks. “I hope to see you again.”                                                            

 


	7. Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has a rather strange conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/2/19
> 
> Had to fix this chapter bc it was total ass! I wrote that shit at midnight the day after school ended while listening to Khalid's new album and I had a lot of feelings. Please forgive me for my word crimes. Also I fucked up the summary while posting this shit for the SECOND. TIME. and I apologize.

Jon Snow was a respectful and honorable man, and nonetheless in no condition to decline the Night King’s invitation to return on the morrow. When he returned to his uncle’s cabin after meeting Hadrian for the first time, he slept for what felt like days. Even though the grog of sleep hung heavy on his head come the next day, Jon climbed that mountain to return to the Grove.

Such as he had been for thousands of years, Hadrian was there, and he was waiting.

Jon’s wounds were healing surprisingly well, considering the lack of intensive treatment. They hardly bled anymore, even when he engaged in activities as strenuous as "mountain"-climbing. Even so, when he reached the top, he was out of breath.

“Careful there, Jon Snow,” A smooth, melodic voice attached to winding arms that took hold of Jon’s shoulders spoke when he nearly collapsed on the eve of their first night in each other’s company. “I would hate to have you fall.”

Nonetheless, Jon fell, but not to the ground. He fell, but in another way.

“ _Oh,_ ” Jon greeted the taller man as he was pulled up. “I… Didn’t even see you there.”

“None ever do,” Hadrian chuckled warmly as Jon stabilized himself in the arms of a dead man. “There's a certain lightness in my step. I apologize if I may have scared you.”

Jon answered, "you didn't scare me. I was just... _Surprised_." 

Hadrian smiled at the young man's comment, his interest altogether piqued by his misunderstanding of the Others. Of course, Hadrian had to read the subtext of Jon's interaction with him to infer this, but it wasn't that much of a leap. There was a certain curiosity possessed by Jon, a certain _forbidden_ curiosity that had driven mortal men to madness in years past, but it was different when the person in question possessed the blood of the beings they sought out. There was no desire on Hadrian's part to entice and hypnotize him for the sake of claiming yet another life and soul, as Death normally did. 

"Why did you return, young one?” Hadrian asked him, his clawed hands pulling away from Jon’s shoulders. “Very few show such desire.”

Jon took a moment to look at Hadrian, but only a moment. It seemed as though, from Hadrian's perspective, that he was trying to figure out exactly what Hadrian 'looked like.' His silvery eyes examined the fine, pale flesh wrapped tight around gaunt bones and tried to find a single, minute indication of asymmetry, but failed.  “You asked me to return, and I am a man of my word.”

Hadrian looked away and took a silent step in the direction of the cliff jutting out from the side of his Grove. “I have not met a man of honor in many years,” Hadrian informed him. "What strange beasts you are... Chivalrous and starving, the last to devour the evils that empower mankind, or so you claim... Gentle house-cats amongst brutal lions."

Jon could have said he was taken aback, but that would have been such a cruel understatement. Hadrian's words spoke to a truth that Jon found painful to face, so Jon found a separate one to ponder over. 

"Your words seem just as cold and calculating as you," Jon told the strange being. It was not meant to be a critical statement, although it came out as such. 

“You flatter me,” Hadrian responded, and the mighty weirwoods of the Grove shook their branches in response. “My coldness is a gift from dead gods, and my calculation... I was born with it, although I was never born.”

Jon smiled nervously as a million unanswered questions ran through his brain. “Your weirwoods here are so beautiful,” Jon told Hadrian instead of asking these inquiries. “I didn’t know they could get this big.”

" _My_ weirwoods?" Hadrian answered. "They are not mine."

"Even so," Jon went on, willing to play Hadrian's game. "They are stunningly beautiful." 

"Not even time can bring them to wither," Hadrian said in a somewhat bleak-sounding response, the ice in his voice cutting into Jon like a knife. "No matter how many arrive to their home under the guise of curiosity and exploit their trust, their branches never cease to wave in the cold, night and night again, just as eternal and undying as the sky above."

Jon approached the reeling man, who held a single red leaf in his clawed, white hand. "Men have come here before?"

"Hundreds," Hadrian answered, his gaze turning to glance over the midnight horizon. "Many come, warlocks or wizards, maesters and madmen, all in search of some virulent, cold malice that could explain the frost on their doorsteps as the ages turn. None have ever returned." 

Jon found himself growing weary, although he had only just arrived. As if they were two souls inhabiting one host, Hadrian looked at him and said, "sit."

Jon obeyed, as he was never one to spite a king with disobedience. He crossed his legs in the snow and looked straight up, like a toddler to his parent. Hadrian then, stiffly and with movements resembling that of an old man, knelt down and sat upon his legs. "You desire to know how your uncle found me, yes?"

"...Maybe."

Death saw past facades that all forces of life could not. After all, Death was the great equalizer... One's lies and fibs shall not go over his horned head. "All of our kind return here, where their blood was inevitably spawned. Your uncle is no different. He was brought here on the brink of death after having picked a fight with some Wildlings and taught of his bloodline and what he would have been had it not been diluted."

"Did you know I would come?" 

Hadrian made uncomfortable eye-contact with his (mostly) human companion, staring with unblinking, unshrinking pupils that bore close to no resemblance to those of a living creature. "I foresaw your arrival two millennia prior." 

"How?" Jon inquired, allowing his fingers to fall into the snow and intertwine with the soft, white, upper layer. 

Hadrian's gaze shifted downwards to the freshly fallen snow beneath his folded legs, watching with careful, blue eyes as individual frost crystals shifted and glimmered beneath the stars. "My own consciousness has always been more of a burden than I prefer to say... It is a starving beast whose hunger never ceases, devouring concepts and histories that have yet to become a reality. It spoke to me of you long before your very conception, and told me you were something of an unofficial heir to another of a similar personality."

 _Unofficial heir?_ "Do you mean my father?" 

Death spoke in verse. His words were easy to misunderstand and even more difficult to decipher, as though he craved nothing more in his existence than to damn mortal men into forever attempting to translate his prose into sensible sentences. Parts of this statement were true, but just as his words, its truth could be easily misinterpreted. The words that came from him were not made to fool the ignorance of man... They were meant to discover the intelligence of man, although they rarely ever did. Only  _once_ have Hadrian's sonnet-esque conversations been correctly understood. He had yet to see if this was about to be the second time. 

"No, not directly," responded Hadrian. "There was another, long before your time... He had your eyes, your hair, the slimness of your figure... You seem almost like his mirror image. By your strange birth and even stranger life, the two of you bear similarities that nullify my assumptions that each of your kind is somehow unique."

Jon had no clue what to say, so he said nothing. Finding himself suddenly stricken by exhaustion, he yawned, and Hadrian's eyes met his own once again. 

"Sleep, child." 

Jon's sad eyes lingered shut when he blinked. 

"It is true, I exhaust mortal beings with my presence." A rare smile came across Hadrian's thin lips. "Dark gods forbid that claim be false, however, a thing I know for sure is that your kind become weary and faint in the frigid cold... A curse placed upon you to keep you from becoming too brazen with your attempts to move north." 

"I'm alright, I swear." 

"You seem to willingly forget I can see through lies, as Death knows not how to hide its truth," Hadrian told him. The cold and the continuing heaviness of his eyelids brought Jon to lie down and give into the fatigue, like a wild animal sacrificing its defensive safety to show trust to its new companion. "Sleep." 


	8. Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lone·li·ness  
> /ˈlōnlēnəs/
> 
> noun  
> sadness because one has no friends or company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/2/19 
> 
> This chapter was ALSO ass, and I don't know??? Why the fuck the dialogue is like this here??? I apologize to anyone who had to go from the first chapters which were fairly decent to this high-holy fuckery. Genuinely. Your comments and kudos are appreciated, btw, and they let me know that you guys enjoy the fic! Thank you so much to everyone who did either!! You guys are the best :000

 

Oh, to be Death. 

The Great Equalizer, the blazing blue eyes in the white cold that strikes fear into the beating hearts of man... An ancient reaper, bestowed upon the mortal world by a god that wished to free its realms of a being that sought only to devour the souls within it. An ethereal cold forced upon the earth to do nothing but  _kill_ and  _reap_ and  _take_ and  _take_ and  _take._  

Oh, to be Death is to be infinitely lonesome. 

For some strange reason, Death felt no such thing as the warmth of life bled into his body, foreign and surreal. A mortal, living thing, warm and infused with blood, resting its head on the body of a death god in physical form. Asleep, somehow, although he should logically be on his guard. 

Death could claim another life, surely. He could make his ever-growing Army of the Dead so much more powerful with a man who has already died  _once_ and possesses the blood of cold gods... He could squeeze the life from his pale throat, or stab him through his beating heart, or so much worse... And the boy would just let him. 

_No, this is how it was back then..._

The other man, the one who Jon resembled so greatly, had done the same. Mortal men can only survive in the presence of a being designed to claim the lives of all those that possessed beating hearts for so long without growing at least slightly weary. That man, too, had fallen asleep, although rather than progressively going from standing to sitting, he had fainted after he met Death for the first time. He had no Other blood in his veins, although he would later be the one to put it into the veins of his children. Thus, in Death's presence, mid-sentence, he had collapsed into the snow, and for once... 

Hadrian  _feared_ that he had killed someone. 

The memory was as clear as a winter night devoid of snowfall, just as all his memories were, and it pained the cavity in his chest so greatly that he attempted to push it from his thoughts once more. There it was  _again,_ though, and Death felt his long, thin fingers begin to tense up. He brought his hands away from the sleeping man, and promised himself that he would refrain from touching him again. 

_The Great Equalizer._

_A being of infinite lonesomeness._

This man wasn't like the rest of his kind. Well, he  _was,_ but they had shunned him and left him to die... So by default, Death took great pity. Thus, as Death thought was appropriate, this young man was of his own breed. He knew that he could never be there to protect him from all that would exist down South... Although he wished he could. He wished to protect him from the men that killed and hated him,  _foul beasts,_ and give him the justice that Death knew he desired. 

_Death will come for all the living, but the cruel shall go first._

 

 

Still, he could not touch him again. 

Winding, spindly fingers could not reach out to entwine with raven curls, or else the young man's flesh could grow lifeless and pale if he brought any kind of fear or sadness upon Death. Truthfully, Death was not meant to feel, but he had learned to do so from a man long-since deceased. Such a dangerous concept,truly, that Death learned to feel hate, fear, anger, sadness, despair,  _all of it._

So he had ceased to do so. 

But at just the thoughts of inadvertently injuring Jon, of how he had been stabbed by his own comrades, of how Death had the power to right all of the wrongs in his life... Death could feel again, and such a concept was, as previously specified, extremely dangerous. 

This newfound  _fear_ did not change a thing, though.

Jon was still asleep, unaware of the inner turmoil his strange friend faced. 

One day he  _would_ be aware, however, and it would be the beginning of something quite beautiful. That was a story for another time, however. A story that has just now been put into motion by a young, exhausted man resting his tired head on the lap of Death. 

 


	9. Reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, to be Death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically what chapter 8 was, but I think I fixed it. Comments and kudos are loved/appreciated :)

After that night, Jon stopped returning.

Oh, to be Death.

Oh, to be Death.

Oh, to be Death.

Adorned in black like a reaper shrouded in darkness, nothing but a monster left outside looking in at everyone breathing and bleeding and _living._

To be shut away from the living was, indeed, to be Death, bleak and dark, pale as snow and empty like a skeleton that’s organs had long rotted away.

For centuries, Death stood atop a lonely mountain betwixt swaying trees, speaking his poetic verses only to things with red leaves and black feathers. Those things never left him, and they couldn’t, even if they wanted to. The birds, or some of them, at least, were a gift from an old friend to keep him company in his isolation, but all they did was watch him with a tilted head and a judgmental gaze… Just like their master.

Soon, Death would leave the mountain to seek out his friend. Or, more accurately, his bitter enemy, but love and hate where two sides of the same coin.

Death would go South and turn day to eternal night, all to complete his purpose as an entity. He would do what he was supposed to because that’s what monsters did, right? He was going to rid the world of the flesh-and-blood creatures that stole his home solely because Death comes for all, and he was going to fall apart into millions of shards of cold glass after his final destination was reached, because the fire of the world will have been extinguished and thus, he has no reason to exist.

So, he walked lightly down the mountain, leaving no implication that he had ever been there. At first, he was left unseen by the residents of this village, who went on with what they were doing as this great evil showed its face once more. It was only when he reached the bottom of the mountain that heads began to turn, although it was mostly out of confusion.

The Others whispered and wondered aloud why Death finally decided to leave the Grove, with certain eyes turning to Jon in confusion and looking back at Death. 

A swarm of Others formed around where Death stood, expecting him to say something grand or wonderous, but his lips remained shut. Finally, he stepped forward, and a path was made for him to walk through.

He did not once look back or say a word, but that was how the Others left the far North and began descending upon the world of mortals.

That was all.


End file.
